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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Growing Up In Mobile: Depression & Wartime, 1929-1949
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mobile during the Depression and World War II
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Judy Walton, MPL Youth Services,
Erin Kellen, MPL Youth Services,
& George Schroeter, MPL Local History & Genealogy
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Contributor
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USA Photographic Archives,
Spring Hill College,
Mobile Historic Development Commission
Format
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pdf
jpeg
mp3
Language
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English
Rights
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This file may be freely used for educational uses as long as it is not altered in any way. No commercial reproduction or distribution of this file is permitted without written permission from this institution.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include illustrations, paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Tissington House Drawings, 1901 - Rebecca Harrison Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Tissington House architecture
Description
An account of the resource
Drawings by Rebecca Harrison of the Tissington House, built 1901
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rebecca Harrison
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Rebecca Harrison Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
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1983
Relation
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Architectural Study - Rebecca Harrison Project, with Evaluation - 1983
Vickers House Drawings, 1935 - Rebecca Harrison Project
Format
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jpeg
Identifier
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Growing-Up-in-Mobile-Tissington House Drawings-1983
1901
architecture
drawing
Mobile
Rebecca Harrison
Tissington House
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Growing Up In Mobile: Depression & Wartime, 1929-1949
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mobile during the Depression and World War II
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Judy Walton, MPL Youth Services,
Erin Kellen, MPL Youth Services,
& George Schroeter, MPL Local History & Genealogy
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
USA Photographic Archives,
Spring Hill College,
Mobile Historic Development Commission
Format
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pdf
jpeg
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This file may be freely used for educational uses as long as it is not altered in any way. No commercial reproduction or distribution of this file is permitted without written permission from this institution.
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include illustrations, paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vickers House Drawings, 1935 - Rebecca Harrison Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Vickers House architecture
Description
An account of the resource
Drawings by Rebecca Harrison of the Vickers House, built 1935-1936
Creator
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Rebecca Harrison
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Rebecca Harrison Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Relation
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Architectural Study - Rebecca Harrison Project, with Evaluation - 1983
Format
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jpeg
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Growing-Up-in-Mobile-Vickers House Drawings-1983
1935
architecture
drawing
Mobile
Rebecca Harrison
Vickers House
-
http://digital.mobilepubliclibrary.org/files/original/424e93e4586a87026a2efb2852837292.pdf
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Growing Up In Mobile: Depression & Wartime, 1929-1949
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mobile during the Depression and World War II
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Judy Walton, MPL Youth Services,
Erin Kellen, MPL Youth Services,
& George Schroeter, MPL Local History & Genealogy
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
USA Photographic Archives,
Spring Hill College,
Mobile Historic Development Commission
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
jpeg
mp3
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This file may be freely used for educational uses as long as it is not altered in any way. No commercial reproduction or distribution of this file is permitted without written permission from this institution.
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Text
Any textual data included in the document
"Growing Up in Mobile, Depression and War Time" Architectural Study
Project: Compare and contrast wealthy upper-class housing of the 1930s with wealthy upper-class housing at the turn of the century.
The Vickers House: built 1935-36, located at 29 Hillwood Road in Spring Hill, west of I-65. A modest two-story house, side-hall plan. Small one-bay porch front entrance, with brick stoop and steps and brick walkway leading up to pebbled half-circle driveway. A closed, private-looking house, with its screened-in porch in the southwest corner, (bottom floor) and, originally, a covered back porch off the kitchen (now walled-in and the kitchen expanded). Set in the middle of a huge lot, with a pebbled driveway offering two entrances to the front of the house, which is on a corner lot surrounded on the two street-sides by a white picket fence. Trees hide the house almost entirely from view from the road.
Children played in the yard, the ditch behind the lot, the neighbors' yards, or the woods (where houses now stand). This meant that the children stuck close to home, a safer environment than if they had lived downtown and played in the streets.
Ten-inch cypress boards side the exterior, red brick makes up the front stoop and steps, walkway, and stairwell leading outside from the southwest screened-in porch. The materials for the house came mostly from other houses being torn down at this time (1935). These "second-hand" materials were less expensive, but of high quality. The simple, rectangular design of the house, its modest size (the Vickers originally planned to add a wing on the north side eventually, but built a house over the Bay instead), and the second-hand materials used in its construction indicate the limitations set by the Depression, during which the general attitude, even among the wealthy, was one of caution and concern over the financial risk involved in the construction of a private home, especially since few people in the 1930s could afford to build, much less live in, a new house.
Hillwood was a new area of Spring Hill when the Vickers built their house in 1935 (theirs was the first home built in the area, not including the three "model homes" in Hillwood built in the 1920s before the Depression, which temporarily ended further development of homes in the area). Hillwood is and was an obviously wealthy suburban street, in the same neighborhood as the "restricted" Mobile County Club. White families, with black servants, have always been the rule in Hillwood. The houses on Hillwood are nearly all different, having been built at different times and through different architects in the years since 1935.
The interior of the house has hardwood floors and paneling (probably oak); a blue marble fireplace in the living room downstairs; indoor plumbing (two-and-a-half baths, 1 1/2 downstairs, one upstairs); a small kitchen with all modern convenience in the back of the house; electricity and a ceiling fan in the southwest screened-in porch; and a cellar-utility area for clothes-washer, servants' room. The house was probably heated through a combination of gas, electricity, and the fireplaces up- and downstairs. Fans and open windows cooled the house. Everything mentioned above in this paragraph was original to the house at the time it was built.
The roof of the house is a moderately steep gable-style, practical for Mobile's rainy climate. Window arrangements are not practical - the kitchen has the fewest (and the smallest) windows, yet it is the hottest room in the house. The Vickers made sure that the other rooms in the house had enough strategically-placed windows to insure a "nice view of the yard"; in other words, the practical purpose of windows, i.e. to provide light and air-circulation, were not considered as important by the Vickers as the "nice view" the windows could provide. Many trees shade the yard, but these are not very close to the house, which would be very uncomfortable without air conditioning.
The Vickers house has few details which would "date" it to the 1930s. Part of the reason for this is that the house was "made to order", its design reflecting the personal preferences of the Vickers when they built the house in 1935. Another reason it is difficult to "date" the house is that it was constructed of second-hand materials, from houses built years before 1935. For instance, the ten-inch wide cypress siding on the houses's exterior was more common in the 19th century than in the early twentieth century, during which time exterior siding was much narrower and consisted of non-organic shingles, asbestos, stucco, etc. (becomes typical of homes built in the inter-war period).
However, several details of the Vickers house indicate that it was built in the Depression year. These details include the fact that the house is much less" street-oriented" than houses built in earlier periods when people would sit on their front porches and visit with their neighbors while the children played in the street. The Vickers house, with its large back yard, its private, screened-in porch, and its location on the lot (set back from the street and hidden from view by trees, the lot surrounded by a white picket fence as a symbol of "private property") is an example of the growing trend in the inter-war years towards privacy, when people more or less cut themselves off from their neighbors by moving inside their houses and into their back yards. The small one-bay porch/ stoop front entrance of the Vickers house is not as open and welcoming as the large front porches of Victorian houses built at the turn of the century or bungalows built in the 1920s.
The Depression evidently caused a change in the general attitude towards money - people who had wealth in the 1930s were careful not to "show off" their wealth. The Vickers could have afforded to be much more extravagant in designing their house, but they kept it simple. The Vickers' rectangular-shaped "town house" has little or no decoration other than: dark green "false" shutters on windows at the front of the house; a wrought-iron handrail on the stairwell leading outside from the southwest screened-in porch; a sunburst window above the front door sill; a gas light/lamp at the end of the front brick walkway; a white picket fence around the street sides of the lot; and several flower beds and many different types of trees in the yard. Even inside the house everything is kept simple: wood paneling instead of wall paper; hardwood floors, with rugs in only a few rooms. The blue marble fireplace in the living room is perhaps the most decorative detail of the house.
The Tissington House - built 1901, located at 1216 Government Street at Georgia Avenue, west of Broad Street but east of Ann Street, so it is extremely close to downtown and lies on the north side of Mobile's "main street" (Government). A very large house with an open, roomy front porch and second story balcony wrapping around the west side of the house from the front. Two-and-a-half stories, the Tissington house has numerous windows, balconies, dormers, and a large tower (turret). It was built on a central-hall plan. The house takes up most of the corner lot on which it was built. The front yard is somewhat larger than the backyard, and concrete steps lead from the front door/ porch to a wide concrete walkway, which empties onto a sidewalk surrounding the lot on its street sides (this sidewalk extends around the block and is typical of downtown Mobile, which has sidewalks in every area, residential and business). These sidewalks were important especially for the children of the Tissington house, since they lived on one of Mobile's busiest streets. The children probably played on the large porch or inside the house in bad weather, in the street or on the sidewalks otherwise. The Tissington house is so large it certainly offered the children enough room to play inside or to be alone if they wished.
The house has five- to seven-inch clapboard exterior siding and the roof is shingled, with decorated fascia boards. The jigsaw and the spindle were among the advancements in technology of the nineteenth century, and both were used to create this typical Victorian house, with its spindle-wood balustrade and jigsaw railing on the front porch and second-story balcony, and the Victorian-turned columns and wooden handcarved decorations on the tower, dormer, and front-porch roof. The house also features stained glass windows. The size and design of the house indicate a type of extravagance in which the wealthy homebuilder of the turn-of-the-century could indulge, whereas the wealthy homebuilder in the Depression era was more inhibited and careful with his money.
The Tissington house is one of several Victorian homes in the area of Georgia Avenue and Government Street. The families living in these houses were of the upper-middle/ wealthy class, and their racial background was white, their servants were probably black. One street over, north of the Georgia-Government area, is Caroline Avenue, which is lined with tiny low-income Victorian "shotgun" houses, also built near the turn-of-the-century, like the Tissington house.
The Tissington has three parlors downstairs; a kitchen in the back of the house (with a marble sink); indoor plumbing; electricity for fans; probably gas for heating as well as the fireplaces (the fire-place in one of the parlors is dark brown marble); hardwood floors covered with narrow-cut carpets; oak paneling and large-patterned wallpaper on the walls. A house this large certainly required several servants to help with its upkeep and the owner's image.
The Tissington is a pure Victorian house, like any other Victorian house built in California, Kansas, or Maine. It adapts to Mobile climate through its open spaces, high ceilings, steep-pitched roofs, and especially through its large porch and balconies. It has many windows, mostly placed wherever they would look best, some of them of stained/ leaded glass. This house might have been more comfortable without air-conditioning than would the Vickers house, which is smaller and not as well ventilated.
Many details "date" the Tissington house to the turn-of-the-century, including: stained/ leaded glass in windows; narrow-cut carpet on the floors; Victorian-turned columns on the porch; wooden handcarved designs on the tower (turret) and dormers; the decorated balustrade around the porch and balconies (jigsaw design on the railing, spindled balusters); detailed molding around the windows; many different sizes and shapes of windows. The tower itself, in addition to cupolas and turrets, were also common to the Victorian style of architecture represented in the Tissington house's design and construction.
The houses of the 1930s were built in the Depression era, a time when people either did not have money or were very careful wit hit. Therefore, the houses built at the turn-of-the-century, a time when most people had fewer financial problems, would be fancier than houses built thirty years later. The people living in the Tissington house in the early 1900s could probably walk to shops and schools because they lived in town. But at the time the Vickers house was built (1935), Spring Hill was a suburb, "out in the country", and the children had to ride bikes to school and the Vickers had to drive into town to work or shop.
The Mobile Public Library Study Grant: Growing Up in Mobile, Depression and Wartime
Evaluation of Rebecca's architectural project
Project: To compare and contrast the wealthy upper class housing of 1930 with the wealthy upper class housing of the turn of the century.
The two houses selected by Rebecca were well chosen to illustrate the contrast in architectural development of the two periods. They also demonstrated the changes in the suburban growth of their respective years. The drawings added much to the project. Not only were they well done but they brought out essential differences in the architectural elements. The written descriptions were detailed enough to bring out the purpose of the project, that of the effect of housing on a child growing up in those surroundings. It would have been helpful if Rebecca could have interviewed Mrs. Tissington as she did Mrs. Vickers and it was unfortunate that she could not go through the interior of the Tissington house to get an accurate picture of the plan, not because she did not try.
From the social standpoint the conclusions drawn were well stated. From the architectural standpoint it might have been interesting to have added a comment on the difference in craftsmanship evidenced in the details of the building since that is the point brought out by the drawings. Both Rebecca and her advisor, Jennifer, did a good job with the subject selected and carried out within the allotted time. They took many trips to the buildings, the photography was excellent and the drawings show much talent on the part of Rebecca.
Elizabeth B. Gould, architectural historian
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Architectural Study - Rebecca Harrison Project, with Evaluation - 1983
Subject
The topic of the resource
Architecture
Description
An account of the resource
A comparison of a wealthy upper-class house of 1930 with a wealthy upper-class house of the turn of the century
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rebecca Harrison
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Rebecca Harrison Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Mobile Public Library
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Elizabeth Barrett Gould
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Growing-Up-in-Mobile-Harrison Architectural Study-1983
1901
1930
architecture
Elizabeth Barrett Gould
Great Depression
Hillwood
Mobile
Rebecca Harrison
Spring Hill
Tissington House
Vickers House